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It's a crass kind of life achievement if all of his life has lead up to adtech. I refuse to believe that there is no middle ground between what facebook is doin

by exergy 9y ago

It's a crass kind of life achievement if all of his life has lead up to adtech. I refuse to believe that there is no middle ground between what facebook is doing and what the average user would like to see them doing.

dschuetz 9y ago
Well that's an interesting juxtaposition. His life achievement would then be "he connected people all over the world" but what he essentially did "was selling ads and he was good at it". There's always a middle ground. You give up a bit of privacy and benefit from some product "free of charge". See? The questions are how much is "a bit", who decides what is in it and who decides who gets what? To agree on middle ground there need to be ground rules/terms. So, the problem is that Facebook alone is deciding upon which rules users get to use their services.
- croon 9y ago
  There's no business incentive to scale down your ad sales even if you charged your users for the service. I agree with you that there needs to be ground rules/terms, but in the form of regulation. If Google chose a middle ground, they'd give away the Pixel phones for free, or at least heavily subsidized. But they don't have to, so they don't. If no one stops you, sell on both ends.
  - icc97 9y ago
    > There's no business incentive to scale down your ad sales even if you charged your users for the service. There's arguments for and against this: For: Newspapers and magazines are an example of selling a product full of advertising. Against: However many online businesses and a lot of iOS/Android apps do offer paid plans that turn off the ads and nothing else.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > a bit It all revolves around what you define as 'a bit' and as long as there is a billion more to be earned by stretching that definition it will be stretched.
usrusr 9y ago
Middle ground would be possible after solo bootstrapping. Any form of distributed ownership will bring expectations of profit without responsibility.

by exergy 9y ago

dschuetz 9y ago

Well that's an interesting juxtaposition. His life achievement would then be "he connected people all over the world" but what he essentially did "was selling ads and he was good at it". There's always a middle ground. You give up a bit of privacy and benefit from some product "free of charge". See? The questions are how much is "a bit", who decides what is in it and who decides who gets what? To agree on middle ground there need to be ground rules/terms. So, the problem is that Facebook alone is deciding upon which rules users get to use their services.

croon 9y ago
There's no business incentive to scale down your ad sales even if you charged your users for the service. I agree with you that there needs to be ground rules/terms, but in the form of regulation. If Google chose a middle ground, they'd give away the Pixel phones for free, or at least heavily subsidized. But they don't have to, so they don't. If no one stops you, sell on both ends.
- icc97 9y ago
  > There's no business incentive to scale down your ad sales even if you charged your users for the service. There's arguments for and against this: For: Newspapers and magazines are an example of selling a product full of advertising. Against: However many online businesses and a lot of iOS/Android apps do offer paid plans that turn off the ads and nothing else.
jacquesm 9y ago
> a bit It all revolves around what you define as 'a bit' and as long as there is a billion more to be earned by stretching that definition it will be stretched.

usrusr 9y ago

Middle ground would be possible after solo bootstrapping. Any form of distributed ownership will bring expectations of profit without responsibility.